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Sharks in Serious Danger
jd writes "According to the BBC, shark populations in the Atlantic declined on average 75% (the hammerhead faring worst at 86% loss) in the past 15 years. This ain't trivial. Many sharks produce one pup a year, if that, and less than half of those survive to adulthood. Sharks are essential to the health of the oceans, so this is not a trivial concern. They're mostly in decline because some idiots like to cut off the dorsal fin, to make soup. (You kill a lot of sharks, and get gristle stew as a reward.) Others die because of paranoia, and yet more because of psychotic trophy hunters. If sharks do die out, they will be the longest-lived species that humanity has exterminated. (Who needs Daleks? We're doing just fine on our own... :()"
Sharks have jumped themselves.
some idiots like to cut off the dorsal fin
:).
Whoa, you just dissed an entire country!
Like many Americans, we scratch our heads when we hear about idiotic practices like killing endangered species such a rhino for its "horn" (actually hair-based protein), or a black bear for its gall bladder, aligators for skin, or, the classic case, elephants for ivory and the occasional foot wastepaper basket (see Gary Larson
Yet of course we've done all kinds of similar things like the buffalo for tongues and hides, the dodo bird for feathers, fur of various animals driven nearly to extinction, etc. I don't think even now we're particularly unified in our view of spotted owls and other species that "get in the way of progress." So with our history and our modern ambivalence, I don't think we're in a great position to lecture, and we're really recent converts ourselves.
But we are in a great position to persuade and, of course, to fund. Shifting the African economy near game preserves from hunting to tourism and financeing alternative agricultural techniques near the rain forests are examples, and help more than the most earnest sermon.
Here's a list for the upper midwest, for starters.
Extinct
What were you expecting?
DR. EVIL
Release the sharks!
(to the room)
All the sharks have had laser beams attached to their heads. I figure every creature deserves a warm meal.
FRAU FARBISSINA
(Clearing her throat nervously)
Dr. Evil?
DR. EVIL
Yes, what is it? You're interrupting my moment of triumph.
FRAU FARBISSINA
It's about the sharks. Since you were frozen, they've been placed on the Endangered Species List. We tried to get some, but it will take months to clear up the red tape.
DR. EVIL
(disappointed)
Right.
(to Austin)
Mr. Powers, we're going to lower you in a tank of piranhas with laser beams attached to their heads.
(Frau clears her throat again.)
DR. EVIL
What is it now?
FRAU FARBISSINA
Well, we experimented with lasers, but you would be surprised at how heavy they are. They actually outweighed the piranha themselves, and the fish, well, they sank to the bottom and died.
DR. EVIL
I have one simple request- C, and it can't be done? Remind me again why I pay you people?
What do we have?
FRAU FARBISSINA
Sea bass.
DR. EVIL
Right.
Wow - the extinction of sharks would mean that Australians could only be killed by dingos - you know that's gotta increase the expected lifespan of Australians by a lot! :)
Whoa, you just dissed an entire country!
Well no, Keanu, not exactly. The people who have been dissed are those that engage in the practice or that purchase products based on those actions. I'm sure that there are people in those countries who aren't happy about the practice of cutting off the dorsal fin.
Yet of course we've done all kinds of similar things like the buffalo for tongues and hides, the dodo bird for feathers, fur of various animals driven nearly to extinction, etc. I don't think even now we're particularly unified in our view of spotted owls and other species that "get in the way of progress." So with our history and our modern ambivalence, I don't think we're in a great position to lecture, and we're really recent converts ourselves.
I'm sure that the same people who frown on the asian practice of killing sharks just for their fin are equally ashamed of the examples you listed in the western world. And, besides, if we've "recently seen the light", don't you think it's perfectly normal for us to try to explain our insight to others? Maybe they can learn from our mistakes.
Please, extinction of species is a serious issue in its own right. Don't try to muddle the discussion by throwing in some tenuous link to nationalism or racism.
GMD
watch this
I think it's important to look at the source. I don't know how Dalhousie University works in particular, but most state universities here are funded by the government. Releasing a study saying they need research and conservation facilities could polarize people enough to get the government to give them more funding.
There's an angle to everything.
You gotta be kidding, I thought there were too *many* in this country! Oh, wait, I'm thinking of lawyers. It's sometimes hard to tell those bloodthirsty species apart. I should have known when you mentioned the 'pups'. We all know lawyers spawn fully grown from fissures in the earth. :)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I know this was modded as flamebait, because, well...it is flamebait. But it does raise an interesting issue.
Fitness is a measure of average reproductive success. If these shark populations are in fact markedly declining then, yes, these sharks do not seem to be very fit. Fitness is a function of environment. You might say that an individual shark has an particular fitness per particular environmental state. When environments (here defined as including other organisms (including us and other sharks)) change, fitness can change.
However, even if this statement might be more or less factual, this statement was used to say something else entirely: that it doesn't matter, ethically or practically, that sharks are dying out...because well its how the natural world works.
But this is a rather weak arguement. First, physical facts, alone, probably do not unambiguously indicate ethical values. This is known as the fact-value distinction. This means that the fact that sharks are not currently fit does not justify our unconcern for their lack of fitness. Still, it does not indicate the contrary either. Personally, I think that it is a very complicated ethical problem. I think we should beware a tendency towards thinking in terms of "presevation" rather than "stewardship." Just because something is natural, doesn't imply that it is the best of possibilities.
Regardless of the ethics of sharks survival or (non-survival), the decline of shark populations should concern us for other, very pragmatic, reasons. The world's ecosystem is vastly dynamic and inter-connected. 9999999 Changes in one component of the system could have complex, unpredictable, and sometimes dramatic global effects. The world is not so simple as we like to believe. It actually doesn't take much to push a system into a positive feed-back loop that reinfoces some tendency...say an ice-age. And for those who pooh pooh this as some kind of paranoid catastrophism need to take a little closer look at the earth's history (or a look at most of the other planets in our solar system). It is not unusual. It happens all the time.
Logic, macros, and more
Y'know, it's just not as simple as you think it is. Sharks, by virtue of being at the top of the oceanic food change, are especially vulnerable to large scale changes in the ecosystem upon which they depend. The fact that their population is falling so rapidly should be a major wake-up call about the health of our oceans (especially given the hugely long time that sharks have existed on Earth.) It is fact, not opinion, that humans are rapidly decreasing the biodiversity of the planet at this moment. While this is a normal part of the Earth's natural cycles if you look at it on a geologic timescale, what we are in effect creating is tantamount to a mass extinction. Mass extinctions generally occur because some species or event has destabilized the Earth's overall ecosystem. Due to the huge level of interconnectedness of biological systems things tend to snowball and major dominant species are wiped out and replaced by newcomers. This has happened before (trilobites, dinosaurs) and it will happen again. Soon if we don't make a concerted effort to stop it as an intelligent, self-aware species.
If you think about it, humans occupy a similar sort of ecological niche to that of sharks. Like them, we are incredibly efficient predators who have spread across most of the earth and occupy a seemingly untouchable position in the food chain. I think if we're not careful and responsible we may soon find ourselves in the same position as the sharks.
Once we initiate large scale ecological change by wiping out a dominant predator like sharks, there is no turning back. I think we cannot even imagine the vastness of the consequences such an event would have on the biodiversity of the oceans.
I'm astounded at how many posters like you in this article actually believe that this is inconsequential or right somehow. We as humans need to wake up and make a concerted, united effort to stop wasteful and shortsighted practices that hasten such environmental change. The Chinese (for example) should not be allowed to harvest unlimited numbers of sharks for dorsal fin soup. The Americans (for example) should not be allowed to dump unlimited amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The potential difference between us and the dinosaurs is that we KNOW that we are making ourselves extinct (yes, I think it's possibly that serious.) We need to gain some species-wide sense of restraint if we don't want to lose OUR niche at the top of the food-chain.
Ecological niches are not static. Wiping out a species has ripple effects thoughout the ecosystem.
Not to mention that the current rate of specied extintion is like nothing since the dinosaurs were wiped out and the whole ecosytem pretty much got rebuilt. Since we are a part of this ecosystem, fucking about with it is not intelligent behavior.
Sometimes I imagine the first blue-green algea having this conversation:
"Hey, all this oxygen we're releasing...it's going to mess up the ecosystem. You know, we're destroying all sort of anaerobic bacteria."
"Ah, screw them if they can't adapt."
And so evolution creates an adaptation - primitive animals. That feed on algea.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood